


Ghost

by LynnLarsh



Series: Votron Promptober [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: But nothing too psychological, Gen, Lots of talk about death and dying, M/M, Shiro and Keith are brothers, but also a hero, lance is a ghost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 22:50:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16168421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LynnLarsh/pseuds/LynnLarsh
Summary: Lance is a ghost with Unfinished Business.  But he doesn't know exactly what that means.  Not that is matters right now, of course.  Not when a (very pretty, violet eyed) boy is dying from a gunshot wound right in front of him.





	Ghost

**Author's Note:**

> So, I've been gone for ages. Sorry about that. I've been on a writing venture that has left me with four and a half books published! The series is called the Wish Quartet (Book One: Society of Wishes) and I couldn't be happier with how the last year has turned out.
> 
> That being said, I actually missed writing fanfiction... like a lot. So! I decided to embark on an October Writing Prompt Challenge that I found on tumblr to kinda get back into the swing of things! (All the thanks to werewolfhome.tumblr.com for the list)
> 
> I can't promise I'll hit every single day (especially considering this one got away with me real hard...) but I'll damn well try.
> 
> So, without further ado! Day One: Ghost

Not all ghosts haunt ancient, abandoned buildings and creepy, run down school houses. Not all ghosts will be caught floating ominously down a flight of stairs or heard moaning from the other side of a seemingly solid wall. Sure, you might find one standing alone on an empty stretch of darkened highway or lamenting their murder in room 305 of a hotel now marketed as a Terrifying Getaway for Thrill Seekers. But not always. 

Sometimes they’re just unlucky teenagers trapped indefinitely in the In-Between, trying desperately to stave of the boredom of a possible eternity alone.

Well, not alone exactly. Sure, Lance might not be able to interact with anyone, but he can watch as the years go by, meandering from place to place, keeping a watchful eye over the children, and then grandchildren, and then eventually great-great grandchildren of his once friends and family. All of whom have passed on long ago, an instant and easy transition into the life beyond.

Lance tries not to take it personally.

He’ll get there eventually, he reminds himself about twice a decade. Once he figures out what his unfinished business is, he’ll get there. He just needs to keep wandering, keep watching, and one day it’ll happen. One day this non-life of aimless drifting will all make sense.

Except that it doesn’t, not at first, not when Lance is too distracted by the face of a young boy ( _Too young. Almost as young as Lance was when he died._ ) as he proceeds to bleed out on the pavement. Wrong place wrong time, Lance had witnessed, a fiery temper putting him in the way of an angry but probably unintended bullet. The thugs had fled, the boy had collapsed against the alley wall, and Lance had knelt beside him as though he could do something. As though his presence in any way would have mattered.

Maybe he just doesn’t want the boy to be alone, not now, not like Lance had been when the waves had sucked him beneath the surf and refused to let go. Maybe, even if the boy has no idea that he’s there, Lance feels like comforting him, offering him some guidance, some companionship into the inevitable.

So Lance reaches out, half on old living instinct, half in desperation, to grab the boy’s hand, pulling back at inches above the twitching, pale fingers once he realizes what he was doing. Which is when vibrant eyes, hazy from blood loss but surprisingly focused, crack open and glance in his direction.

Lance doesn’t think much of it, frowning in pity at those eyes ( _Beautiful, violet eyes filled with the echo of a determination Lance had seen a mere precious glimpse of_ ). People’s spirits tend to reach out for anything and anyone in those fleeting moments where death begins seeping in around the edges. 

Except.

Except the boy’s gaze isn’t darting about what should be the empty space in front of him, nor is it dazed and clouded by the confusion and fear of the slowly dying. No. Those violet eyes are completely aware and lingering on one thing: Lance’s face.

Lance tries to write it off. Even as he shifts to the side, to what should be past the line of the boy’s field of vision, violet eyes track him, head turning lazily to follow Lance’s motions. A trickle of his own confusion and fear runs down Lance’s spine, settling at the small of his back and pushing him more firmly to his knees in front of the dying boy. No matter the impossibility, no matter the naive ridiculousness, it’s hard to deny. The vague remnants of Lance’s heartbeat speeds up in his memory; this boy can _see him_.

“Help...” The boy says, and though this too shouldn’t be possible, Lance startles at the wrecked and gravely sound of the boy’s voice. Lungs filling with blood, if Lance had to guess; each intake of breath crackles and wheezes and Lance feels his own chest tighten despite the lack of necessary air.

“There’s-” Lance starts to say, but the words get stuck in his throat. Sure, the boy can see him somehow, but can he hear him too? Lance shakes his head and decides it doesn’t matter; he should say something. He should do something. But. “There’s nothing I… I can’t do anything for you. I’m sorry.” 

Despite the way it seems to literally drain what little of his life is remaining, the boy reaches a shaking hand behind him. 

“Hey…” Lance panics, especially when the boy can’t quite seem to get whatever it is out of his back pocket. “Please stop. You’re… You’re hurting yourself.” Lance is reaching towards him again, his own hand shaking in phantom physical sympathy. Eventually, the item is retrieved and the boy’s arm falls limp into his own lap, Lance’s shoulders sagging in relief.

“Sh-Shiro,” the boy says through a wheeze, trying and failing to lift up the object and hand it off in Lance’s direction. It’s a cell phone, screen cracked and covered in streaks of blood from where the bullet wound had dripped down his side.

“Shiro,” Lance repeats, trying to keep the boy talking for some reason. He can practically feel the way his spirit is struggling between hanging on and letting go and for some reason that makes Lance anxious. Desperate. “Is that your name? Shiro?”

The boy frowns, eyes drifting closed and making Lance’s stomach drop. But all he does is shake his head before opening them again. “Call,” he croaks, licking chapped and bloodied lips before forcing out more words, each more of a whisper than the last. “Call… Shiro…”

Again, Lance’s chest aches at his own inability, the restraints put in place by his death keeping him from following one simple, dying request.

“I can’t. I’m… I’m sorry, I…” 

Something seems to give way in the boy at those words, the deathgrip he’d had on his cell loosening and the frown in his brow softening out. “Okay,” he says, the word barely more than a breath as the boy closes his eyes.

But Lance is selfish and lonely and the thought of watching this boy ( _this beautiful boy with the beautiful eyes and the deep voice who can see him, who_ sees _him_ ) fade away into nothing, a spirit snipped from its tether… Lance can’t bear the thought.

“Wait just… Stay awake, all right?” Lance hears himself begging on half second delay, the decision to speak almost involuntary thanks to his currently rising panic. “What’s your name?”

After what feels like too long, so long Lance would think the boy had drifted away without him knowing, those eyes flicker back open, halfway and hooded; exhaustion is ever present and growing beneath his features.

“Kei-” A crackling breath and wet sounding cough interrupts him, a line of blood dripping past the corner of his mouth and leaving a sickening trail of red all the way down his chin. Yet still, the boy tries again. “Keith.”

Lance swallows back his relief and tries to keep his face kind, the tone of his voice kinder, even if he’s suddenly wracked with a fierce and unexpected need that he hasn’t felt in decades, maybe centuries.

He doesn’t want this boy, this _Keith_ to die.

There has to be something he can do, somewhere he can go that might give Keith a chance at staying alive. Maybe he can will enough spiritual energy around this spot to cause a minor explosion? Get a passerby’s attention that way? Or maybe, if this Keith can see him, someone else might be able to see him too, just enough to lead them here and get them to call an ambulance?

“Hi, Keith. You’re going to be okay.” And while he might not yet believe it, Lance smiles, mind spiraling with as many ideas as he can throw a dart at, praying that one, just one will land and give him what he needs to get Keith to a hospital or to this Shiro or-

Bullseye.

It’s a shot in the dark, especially because he’s not even sure if Keith and Shiro are related, but maybe this Sight runs in their family. Maybe, if he can follow a direct line from here to Shiro, he’ll be able to get Keith’s message across in time.

Even if it ends up just being to say goodbye.

“I know you’re hurting, Keith,” Lance says, voice even and calm now that his goal has solidified into a plan of action. “But I need you to do something for me.”

“N-Name,” Keith tries again before succumbing to another small fit of rather painful sounding coughs. Yet still, he’s persistent. And also apparently a bit delusional. “What’s… your name? You’re… pretty.”

For a split second, Lance is certain he’s about to blip out of existence, his grip on the tangible world glitching beneath the shock of Keith’s flattering and probably involuntary words. But thankfully, the situation is just dire enough to merit distraction until later.

“Okay, Casanova,” Lance clears his throat and gestures to Keith’s phone still lying limp in his palm. “Here’s the deal. You do me a favor and call this Shiro of yours, and then I’ll tell you my name. Sound fair?”

Keith frowns, eyes glazing over a bit as if he’s having trouble following, but Lance snaps in front of his face, keeping those violet eyes from drooping too far.

“Come on, Keith. You want to know my name, right?” Lance tries to bribe, and if his voice is a bit shaky with desperation, Keith is too far gone to notice. All Keith does is nod once, more of a sharp droop of his head, and then drags his thumb over the home button, unlocking his screen. He slowly, shakily pulls up Shiro’s number and presses Call, a tinny ring echoing around the empty hallway.

“Can’t… speak,” Keith wheezes again, and if Lance weren’t inches away from him, he might not have been able to hear the words at all. 

“You won’t have to, okay?” Lance offers, feeling the slight pull in the air between Keith’s phone and Shiro’s what must be a few miles away. Over the years, he’d watched the sky become filled with these fabricated spirits, these digital phantoms connecting every human on the planet together. He’d hated them at first, but right now, he feels like praising their creator. “I’ll talk for you. Just keep hanging on.”

The phone clicks and an equally tinny, male voice speaks on the other side of the line, the electronic pull between locations strengthening into an easy path to follow. But first, he needs Keith to-

“Name…?” Keith hums, eyes closed, and Lance’s heart plummets at the sound, so close to vanishing completely, a spirit barely hanging on by a thread. So much for getting him to dial 911 next; his lips have started to go purple, fingertips too.

“I’m Lance,” he whispers back, wishing he could reach out, give the boy’s hand a comforting squeeze. The voice on the phone starts repeating Keith’s name, worry evident even from the other side of a receiver. Lance needs to go, needs to follow that digital spirit before Shiro hangs up and the pathway becomes clouded amidst the millions of others always floating over their heads. But not before he adds a soft, “My name is Lance. It’s nice to meet you, Keith. Now do me a favor and don’t die.”

Then, without giving himself the chance to think too hard about how untested this particularly ghostly skill of his really is, Lance lets the distant and crackling sound of Shiro’s voice over Keith’s cell warble and disjoint. Then, with a breath, he wills it to solidify, and with it his corporeal form. He’d only ever jumped distances like this a handful of times, always with exhaustive repercussions and no more than boredom as a motivator. But this time it’s important.

So this time, he doesn’t just blip in and out of focus, reappearing a bit blurry and tired on the other end. No, this time, he _slams_ back into existence, the air around him practically vibrating with energy, so much so that, before he manages to get himself under control, he can see, no _feel_ , the way half of the light bulbs in his general vicinity explode upon impact.

Even though his vision swims and his whole body feels stuck somewhere beyond the In-Between, slipping in and out of focus in a layered, intangible version of above, below, and all around, he wills himself to speak, wills himself to focus aching eyes on the figure currently pressed into the corner of what Lance now realizes is an apartment kitchen.

Pressed into a corner and fearing for his life apparently.

So, with another deep breath that rattles his lungs and swirls like tendrils of smoke in the air around him, Lance wills himself to properly manifest. This In-Between amidst the In-Between may be incorporeal, but that doesn’t mean he has to be. And if he’s going to get Keith’s message across without giving Shiro a heart attack, he needs to materialize. Right. Now.

The mental chiding seems to work, the vibrating energy fizzling into a dull thrum around his shoulders. He can feel his spirit settling back into its usual form like bones settling beneath skin, his vision slowly shifting from sharp and painful to a more muted but much more bearable understanding of his surroundings. Which include the supposed Shiro, staring at him from the corner with wide eyes and a frying pan brandished in front of him like a sword. 

Lance wastes no time.

“You need to call an ambulance and have it sent to an alley between Fifth and Central,” he says, matter-of-fact, even if his voice is still slightly hollow sounding, like his vocal chords are somehow still stuck in the ether somewhere. “Keith is dying,” he tacks on for good measure, watching with relief as Shiro’s gaze snaps from him, to the cell phone one the floor between his feet, and back.

“Who-?” Shiro starts to say, and perhaps it’s involuntary, but mostly it’s just frustration, because one second Lance is on the far end of the apartment kitchen, the next he’s inches from Shiro’s face.

“That’s not important right now, Shiro!” Lance shouts, and then winces when another light fixture meets its explosive end. He forces his spiritual energy back down to somewhere in the vicinity of pre-boiling-over and tries again. “He was too out of it to call 911 himself, so you need to do it. Now. He’s already lost a lot of blood.”

At first, Shiro looks as though he’s about to ask more questions, but thankfully just reaches down for his phone instead, quickly dialing 911 and telling the dispatcher where to go. Albeit distant and a bit staticky, Lance can hear the woman on the other end saying that there are paramedics already close to Keith’s location. He’s so relieved, he nearly flickers out of existence all together.

Except, he isn’t given the chance, not when Shiro is grabbing his keys off the hook by the door and rushing down the stairs, Lance following on autopilot at first only to stop on the landing as his stomach begins to twist itself into knots. Ones that instantly loosen when Shiro turns around and shouts, “If you’re not coming with me, then you sure as hell better meet me there.”

It would be impossible for Lance to make another jump like that any time soon, but that’s not what has Lance following Shiro to his car, phasing through the locked passenger side door, and settling awkwardly into the seat. No. It’s so much more selfish than that. For the first time in centuries, there are people that _see_ him. _Hear_ him. And he’d do anything to hold on to that feeling, anything to make sure that one of those people doesn’t die a bloody mess on the pavement. Even if there’s nothing he can do besides blink in and out between the back seat and passenger seat like the physical manifestation of a nervous tick.

When Shiro finally barks at him to pick a seat and stay in it, Lance forces all of his spiraling concentration on that task and not on the mental image of pretty violet eyes and a face too pale to be living.

The drive to Keith’s alleyway isn’t far, especially with how quickly Shrio is driving, but it’s just long enough for Shiro to bite out a clipped, “Are you real?” into the otherwise unbearably tense silence. Lance can’t hold back his scoff in reply.

“Yeah. Dead but real.”

“How is his happening?” Shiro asks after another not insubstantial silence. Lance wishes he knew, wishes there had been a manual waiting for him on the Veradero Beach shore with the words Handbook for the Recently Deceased on it like in Beetlejuice. But sadly, he’s had to play the game of Purgatory all on his own since day one, learning the controllers by trial and error and lamenting a lack of cheat codes.

So instead of a proper response, he just mumbles a soft and sad, “I don’t know.”

Thankfully, there’s no more time for questions after that, Shiro’s car screeching to a halt on the side of the road perpendicular to the now empty alleyway. A handful of cop cars are still parked along the city block, flashing lights painting the dirty cement walls in splotches of blue, white, red. Shiro is out of the car in seconds, leaving Lance to sink back into the ether for a moment and reorient himself outside of the no longer moving vehicle. When he blips back into existence, it’s in the middle of the street, red and white lights dimly flashing as a siren wails in the distance.

“-on the scene in moments after your call,” Lance hears a woman talking to Shiro, though he keeps his eyes pinned on the ambulance slowly disappearing down the street. “They didn’t manage to stabilize him, but he’ll be at St. Joan’s in a matter of minutes.” Whatever else the woman says fades into white noise, the words “-blood transfusion-” and “-eight minutes by car-” the only things managing to register. The ambulance is nearly a speck in the distance now, but Lance can still reach it, if he tries.

When Lance glances over his shoulder. Shiro is already getting back in his car, his eyes scared but determined, even as they lock onto Lance for a brief but weighted moment. 

He nods, and Lance closes his eyes.

When he opens them again, there’s a thrumming in his spirit and a bluish glimmer around the edges of his vision. But Keith is there, a mere inches away, laid out on a gurney and covered in tubes. A medic is doing chest compressions, but it does nothing to stop the high pitch tone of the monitor from proclaiming that Keith’s heart has stopped. And it does nothing to will the glowing essence of his spirit to return to his body, the reddish glow of Keith’s form simply lingering on the opposite side of the gurney and staring resolutely at its own slack face.

“You don’t want to leave, Keith,” Lance says, and though the spirit doesn’t even bother to glance in his direction, he knows Keith can hear him. “I know you don’t. I can feel it.”

“But it hurts,” Keith says after a moment, his voice echoey and already distant. “I’m tired.” The phantom memory of Lance’s pulse rushes at the sound of it. The sound of giving up.

“I know you are, and… and it’ll probably hurt for a while,” Lance tries, walking around the gurney and reaching out for Keith’s hand. This time, he allows himself to touch, to intertwine his fingers, to squeeze in comfort, silently revelling in the feeling of someone else’s hand in his. Even if just their spirit’s essence of one. “But at least you’ll be alive.”

“You’re not alive,” Keith frowns and Lance can’t help the way that makes him smile, completely unintended.

“No. I’m not. But you can be, Keith. And you should be.” Then, for good measure, he adds a soft, “Shiro would miss you if you left. I would too. So please.” He gently pulls Keith over to his body, settling a fiery hand atop its lifeless counterpart. “Please wake up.”

Keith looks at him for a long moment, long enough that Lance begins to worry the paramedic will call time of death. But then, he closes his eyes, spirit blurring in sparks of red and orange before vanishing completely.

The heart monitor beeps. Then it beeps again.

Lance doesn’t feel anything physical anymore, not really, but in that moment, he swears he feels his knees go weak in relief.

Lance follows Keith all the way to the hospital, into the operating room, and further. After so long letting the concept of time wash over him like an ever present but easily ignorable stream, it feels weird to be so hyper focused on the present. He could go months, even years, without realizing the passage of time, but as he watches Keith’s surgery, watches the way they settle him into the ICU, then eventually a seperate room for recovery patients, the present begins to feel ages long, moving both much, much too slowly, and all at once.

Because before Lance can even remember blinking, suddenly Shiro is closing the door behind him, the only light in the room coming from the open window and the obscenely bright full moon. Shiro pulls up a chair and plants it as close to Keith’s bedside as possible.

Neither of them speak for a long, long while.

But, much like in the car, Shiro is the first to break the silence.

“They said he flatlined for three minutes on the way here,” Shiro whispers, though it might as well be a scream for how loud it sounds to Lance’s ears. “Then, as soon as they stopped compressions, his heart started beating again. Just like that.” A long, agonizing pause. “Was that you?”

Lance settles himself into the shadowed corner of the room, crossing his arms as tightly over his chest as he can. “I just told him you’d be sad,” he answers honestly. “If he left, I mean. I told him you’d miss him, so he should stay.”

Shiro hums, as if processing this information, possibly even picking it apart to find the truth behind it. But eventually, when he either finds nothing or everything he’d been looking for, Shiro lets his head fall into his hands, fingers scratching absently through his hair.

“Thank you,” he says eventually, barely lifting his head enough to pass a weary glance to Lance’s corner. Lance can’t bear to look at it, staring instead at the far wall.

“I just followed him here, that’s all. You would have too, if you’d made it in time.”

“You saved my brother,” Shiro interrupts, voice almost amused, even if tinged with worry and fatigue. “Not just in the ambulance, but by coming to me, by being there for him all this way.” He breathes in deep, then lets it out on a long, resigned sigh. “I don’t know much about… your kind-”

“The dead? Ghosts? Spirits with Unfinished Business?”

“Sure,” Shiro huffs out a tired laugh, shaking his head in what looks like disbelief. “All of that. But I want to help you somehow, if I can. As a thank you.”

Lance doesn’t quite know what to say to that at first, but as they stay there together in silence, their only company the various beeping of whatever medical equipment was keeping Keith comfortable and monitored, Lance caves once again to his own selfishness.

“Can you just… keep talking to me?” If he could blush, he’s certain his face would be tomato red at the request, but still he presses on. “It’s been a long time since I’ve talked to anyone and I just… I forgot how much I missed it.”

Shiro blinks at him, surprised, but eventually he settles back into his chair with a nod.

They talk for what’s probably hours, about how Lance has made a point to avoid all other ghosts for fear of Tortured Spirits or Lost Souls corrupting his energy. About how he’d spent his first few decades searching every lead to be had on mediums or psychics in the hope that one of them might be real, that one of them might be able to help him figure out why he can’t pass on. None of them were.

“Do you think that’s what we are?” Shiro asks at that one. “Mediums?” Lance just shrugs.

“Don’t know, but you’re the first living beings I’ve been able to have a conversation with in… ever. So I’d say the odds are good.”

Shiro talks to him about Keith and about their time growing up. About how Keith has a nasty habit of getting into trouble, not so much because he goes looking for it, but because for some reason it goes looking for him.

“Might be his spirit,” Lance hums in thought, letting his eyes trail over Keith’s face, remembering those eyes filled with fire and determination, even when facing down the barrel of a gun.

“What do you mean?” Shiro asks when Lance doesn’t explain. Lance just shrugs again.

“His spirit is like fire, though right now it’s more like embers I guess. But I’ve seen fiery energy in spirits call out to other energies like a campfire in winter, you know? Like other spirits, colder spirits, are looking to warm themselves up with his. And the nastier the person, the colder and more desperate for warmth that energy becomes.”

Shiro groans, running a hand down his face despite the smirk that refuses to leave his lips. “So you’re saying my baby brother really is a magnet for trouble.”

“More or less,” Lance smirks right back.

They talk about life and death, about what it’s like to get stuck in the In-Between and what it’s like to feel stuck, without a purpose in the already short and fragile lives humans lead. Shiro says they’ll find a way to help Lance somehow, figure out what his Unfinished Business is and hopefully get him to move on. Lance doesn’t allow himself to be hopeful about it, not with two strangers that he just met, but he does allow himself to be grateful.

Lance gets so wrapped up in just _having a conversation with someone_ , that me misses the exact moment Keith wakes up. Shiro doesn’t, though. He’s on his feet in an instant, pressing the alert button for the nurse.

“Sh’ro?” Keith groans, head tilting in his brother’s direction, but only just. Lance floats back into his corner, not quite ready to leave, but also knowing that there’s no place for him in Shiro and Keith’s bubble at the moment.

“Hey, bud,” Shiro smiles, eyes noticably watery even from a distance. “You scared the shit out of me, you know that?”

“S’rry…” 

Keith tries to lick his lips, clear his throat, but every motion seems to be difficult. Morphine, probably, but at least he’s not in pain anymore. At least he’s not dying anymore.

Shiro seems to feel the same about the situation, letting his head fall onto Keith’s chest with a strangled laugh.

“Lance says you have a fiery spirit, you know that?” He mumbles, a bit hysterical from relief, probably, considering Keith probably doesn’t even remember who he is anymore. But Shiro keeps going, Lance’s chest tightening with every word. “He says your warmth attracts nasty people with cold spirits, cold energies. So, I told you so. You really _are_ a magnet for trouble.”

“Lance?” Keith croaks out, and even when raw from tubes and rough from medically induced sleep, the sound of his name in Keith’s voice makes the memory of his heart ache. Keith might not remember him anymore but, it still- “He here?” Keith interrupts his thought. Even Shiro has to look up at that, blinking in surprise. Lance takes an involuntary step out of the shadows, and Shiro follows the movement with his eyes.

“He’s-” Shiro starts to say, but Keith just hums a note to himself and closes his eyes.

“He’s hot,” Keith chuckles, warm and soft and definitely delusional from the pain meds. “Wanna ask’m out.” Then, softer, on the tail end of a renewed slumber, he adds, “Saved me.”

“Yeah, bud. He did,” Shiro replies, equally as soft. Or, at least, that’s what Lance _thinks_ he says.

Because, while Lance knows that he’s lost the ability to blush, that doesn’t mean, when flustered enough, that he won’t apparently go completely incorporeal.

**Author's Note:**

> Every one of these prompts has the potential to be a continuing story. I'll probably just see which inspires me and which you all seem to like most.
> 
> Happy October, my darlings! It's good to be back.


End file.
